Tuesday, March 3, 2009

Depressing housing data

I mentally bookmarked an graph concerning the historical Case-Shiller price index a week or two ago, but am just now getting to posting on it. It is an interview with Prof. Robert Shiller, who created the Case-Shiller price index. The short take-away: we are only halfway through the decline in home value, relative to historical values. We probably still have a long way to fall.

I've seen this graph in other blogs, and I'll go ahead and reproduce it here to help show graphically just how ridiculous the recent boom was. It is a version of the Case-Shiller index going back to 1890, adjusted for inflation. Since WWII, the Case-Shiller index has seemed to have a natural index of about 110. Previous bubbles in the late 70's and 80's topped out at 125, while the recent boom topped out at over 200. Seeing visually how large the bubble was really drove home how bad things are, and how far we still have to go.